Actinic and CSS3 and PIE

[meden]

Hi folks - I started this thread a few minutes ago and it never appeared for some reason, apologies if it ends up duplicated somehow.

I was wondering if anyone has attempted to integrate CSS3 PIE into an Actinc site using V9 or 10? (for those who don't know PIE is a plugin that forces the various incarnations of IE to display various CSS3 effects (rounded corners, gradients, box shadow etc) correctly and with very little extra coding (one line per CSS3 rule basically) I've only just come across it myself and am using it very successfully on a non Actinic site I'm working on and as I've got an Actinic project coming up in the new year (probably on V10) I was hoping I would be able to utilise PIE... I'm not that optimistic though...
Kind Regards
Mick

[meden]

Hmm - I'll take the resounding silence to mean it's a no go then

[malbro]

Hmm - I'll take the resounding silence to mean it's a no go then

There is no reason why it shouldn't work, you are adding an htc file to the server, this is an html extension and it allows the IE browser to do things it normally couldn't.

The downside is the site will take a performance hit on any browser that uses the htc file.

The resounding silence is probably that no-one has done it.

[meden]

Thanks Malcolm - that's encouraging. I know there is a performance hit but it seems to be minimal so far on the brochure site I'm putting together (I suppose it depends on how much CSS3 is being used on the page of course)

[Goz]

Hmm - I'll take the resounding silence to mean it's a no go then

I think the resounding silence was because you asked at 2pm on Sunday afternoon and then commented on it at 9:40am on the Monday morning when most people won't even have finished their first cup of tea and caught up with emails let alone considered looking at the Actinic forum

Haven't tried this personally but if you get it going we'd love to hear how.

[meden]

Thanks Goz- I'll keep the community informed when I put it into action

[Steve G Griggs]

Css3 pie

I have not used PIE on an Actinic design yet, (I will be testing soon).
I see no reason why it won't work though.
However I have used it on a non e-commerce site and can comment on the following:
1) The file is quite small, and does not affect page loading times apart from a small delay between the page rendering in IE, and the CSS3 effects "kicking in", however this causes no annoying flickering or blank screens.
2) You just have to add a single behaviour to each css class which has css3 in it to tell the script to parse it: IE behavior: url(/path-to/PIE.htc);
Note: this path is relative to the HTML file being viewed, not the CSS file it is called from.
more info is at http://css3pie.com/documentation/getting-started/.
3) There are some bugs which are documented, one being with z-index. However nothing too serious.
4) The server needs to be set up to set up to use .htc behaviour files (but I have not had a problem so far.
5) For those who are interested documentation is at:
http://css3pie.com/documentation/
It has worked well for me so far without upsetting any other scripting or page loading times. Any http request or other overheads seem minimal.
Try it and have fun.
As an aside I tried the Google webkit plug in for IE, and it causes a VERY annoying page flicker for me on loading. I won't be thinking about using it unless it improves a lot. It also has printing issues.

[leehack]

"Progressive Internet Explorer" for anyone that couldn't be bothered to look it up. Brings IE6-8 up to speed with CSS3, which is the latest incarnation of CSS with lots of exciting new additions.

[Steve G Griggs]

Thanks for the comment explaining PIE Lee.
Of course it would be even better if we could have all our visitors to the websites using a standards compliant CSS3 / HTML5 browser without all the fuss over IE9 needing vista windows 7...

[leehack]

It is getting rather absurd now i must admit, currently checking:

IE6, IE7, IE8 & soon to be IE9

then we have Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome

then we have mobile devices

it's almost a day to fully test nowadays, getting ridiculous!

[Darren B]

It is getting rather absurd now i must admit, currently checking:

IE6, IE7, IE8 & soon to be IE9

then we have Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome

then we have mobile devices

it's almost a day to fully test nowadays, getting ridiculous!

Lee how do you get on testing various versions of ie with vista or windows 7 or do you still have an xp machine to do this with?

Cheers
Darren

[leehack]

I have an XP desktop with all browsers on, a W7 desktop with all browsers on except for IE6, a Vista laptop with latest versions of all browsers on and then a blackberry. Iphone is the only real one I lack to check on as we all have blackberries.

I've never seen different rendering across the different operating systems and to be honest when you first start checking sites, you learn the loopholes and build those fixes into your standard method of coding.

I shall probably drop IE6 when IE9 arrives to be honest. I use the multiple IE plugin to see different versions of IE.

[Duncan Rounding]

I have all the latest popular browsers in W7 and then use a couple of VMs to test with IE6 and other older browsers. I check mobile versions on iPhone in Safari and Opera Mini.

I find that more than sufficient. I intend supporting IE6 for some time yet though as the Government and many other big corps will still be using it for an age yet I think.

[Steve G Griggs]

Ie6

I intend supporting IE6 for some time yet though as the Government and many other big corps will still be using it for an age yet I think.

And at a time when cyber terrorism is the next big threat our govt uses the least secure browser and has no plans to change...
Anyway we are getting off the topic now.

[Steve G Griggs]

More on CSS3 PIE

If you intend using PIE to add support for CSS3 to older IE versions be there's a problem to be aware of:
IE9 (beta admittedly) does not like PIE being used, it refuses to display background colours on and div's in the page. I am trying out a workaround for this though.
This will probably involve conditional comments and separate IE9+CSS3 browsers and Pre-IE9 stylesheets--messy.